


The Sweet Hereafter

by NicoleAnell



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-04
Updated: 2012-06-04
Packaged: 2017-11-06 21:23:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/423373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NicoleAnell/pseuds/NicoleAnell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set after "Deadlock". Written for a twelvecolonies drabble challenge (prompt: "air") and first place winner.  Warning for canon miscarriage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sweet Hereafter

It's such a small thing that takes him away from her, lacking oxygen.  Perhaps she was never made to nourish a life, the protections and pathways inside her insufficient.  The right blood wouldn't get to his rapidly developing brain, his heart failed soon after.  He's such a small, small child, Caprica can't even understand how he needed that much air.

For once she hates human biology, her weak approximation of it.  She can't see a fascinating, precious side to its fragility now.  She's seen humans asphixiate.  She can't help imagining it the same way -- a pale boy gasping through his nose, fighting in confusion for his small, small life. (She saw what remained of his body herself, without Saul.  His head was larger than the rest of him.  He looked barely like a person.)

Dr. Cottle gives her space, lets her crumple into her cot with her face buried. (How long can she hold it there, without gasping?) She eats when she can manage, and they never ask her to leave.  She kept expecting to be given permission, some kind of destination, and then remembered things are different now. She is lost.

Cottle checks on her during his rounds; that her blood pressure has come down, finally. He asks, "You need anything?" and she takes water, just to be polite.  He watches her drink this time, and it triggers a sudden ache -- Saul watching her, that same kind of hesitating silence.  She swallows what remains of her cup and he takes it back from her. "Thank you."

"I had six grandchildren," he tells her.  "Some of them older than you."  (She realizes she doesn't know how old she is.  She knows how old she looks, which is close enough to his meaning, and she tilts her head up to him.)  "And my..." Something strains in his throat, and he pushes through it gruffly. "Jane, my second, she was six months along.  They had the room painted."  She stares, transfixed by him in a way she wasn't before.  "You're not the first to go through this, sweetheart." (She's never heard a term of endearment quite that way before, dismissive but still tender somehow, and she dated Gaius for two years.) "Too many times to count just on this ship.  And you know, they go on.  They try again."

"Saul won't," she says with a quickly passing bitterness. It's an empty, resigned fact. "We won't."

"He's an ass," Cottle grumbles. She almost smiles, only half politeness. "And it's nothing to do with you. It had nothing to do with that kid."

"Did he hurt?" she asks in a small voice. He takes long enough to answer that she has to look at him. He's wearing a pained _what do you want me to say?_ look. She understands, he doesn't want to diminish the realness of him, the child she'd named, but there's that idea of him gasping and afraid...

"Never as much as the mother," he says. It's so much an attempt at comfort that she feels guilty for shattering then, all the air knocked out of her by the word. He places a hand on her shoulder as she rides through the tears, and doesn't pull away when she grabs onto it.  She steadies herself when the pain dries up again, half a minute only.

"Your family," she says afterwards. "Did they all...?" The words don't come, don't have to. He makes a flat affirmative noise, his eyes somewhere else. "I'm sorry," she says raggedly, because it's an effort to pull the words out, the feeling out, but it's not insincere.

He grimaces, shrugs it off. "So am I." Then, "Everyone's lost something here."

She shakes her head, thinking dimly of how much else he meant, the only Cylon child to nearly exist.  What she lost and will never have again.  "He was different," she sniffles, wiping her face.

"I don't think so," he says, gently. He touches her hand again for just a moment, just enough, and then leaves her.  And for the first time in days, she feels almost like she can breathe.


End file.
